A Welcome From Kris Demeanor When most kids went to the Calgary Stampede as cowboys and cowgirls, I went as a pioneer merchant/pharmacist, in black and white dress clothes and a ribbon tie, and headed straight for the quilting display. After the grade three class went to the zoo, I drafted a lengthy tirade about inadequate cages for the large cats.
I wanted more than anything else to live in a world of gnomes. During an anti nuke march with Youth Action For Peace in Grade 11, I withstood taunts of Get a job from yokels in trucks and sang Where Have All Flowers Gone at the downtown rally only to realize the peace sign I had painted on my placard was actually a Mercedes Benz logo and no one had the heart to tell me.
I am by nature a contrarian, and also a coward, in so far as I have never let sanctimony get in the way of being well liked. Calgary breeds such divided souls.My parents are artists, atheists and socialists. They have been the only NDP sign and the only unpaved driveway in the riding of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper. My sister Monika and I were raised with all the comforts and distractions a city suburb affords, and were instilled with a first hand love of the natural world, an awareness of the importance of travel, social justice, laughter, sport, ritual, Esperanto, and fine food.Early poetry and songwriting revealed an obsession with social gratification and romantic conquest, all the more pointless because physically I was about as developed as a sea monkey until I was 20. After busking and drinking through Europe and the Middle East for a couple of years, I realized that other peoples lives and other countries provided better fodder for songs and stories than my own, and adjusted my writing accordingly. I have since found that there is plenty to write about right here in Calgary, at the crossroads of guilt and shame.I have had the same friends since elementary school, and it has been good to go from raiding gardens in our pajamas to doing bottle hoots to Rastaman Vibration to sitting at the reservoir listening to the Springsteen Live box set talking about being famous by 21 to carving ANARCHY into our forearms with dull pins to playing Fishermans Blues at the harbour market in Old Jaffa to seeing each others joy and contentment levels heightened through finding life partners and having offspring.Playing my own music in bars and at festivals around the world has been a gift, as has meeting and engaging with a great number of fiercely talented artists who I have come to adore and envy. They constantly inspire.I have learnt very little that sticks. Everything is true. Boxing is a sport of elegance and barbarism. Magpies will be disdained for their incessant chatter and admired for their wits and resourcefulness. Cities are places of vibrancy and culture and they are zoos of misery. Humans are spiritual and romantic creatures who crave love and acceptance. They are ignorant and mean and mired in addiction and unhealthy sex obsession. I don't know if some people are evil or just confused. I don't know if I should hate or pity them. It's certainly more satisfying to hate them.The artist entertains. The artist distracts, illuminates, creates atmospheres of engagement and common interest, chronicles the Great Demise. The artist is hooked on the promise of the next ego stroke, and dreams of a low interest mortgage and a games room with a bar.I am pleased to be part of this great web of other people, musicians and lovers of music. We can share, and screw with our identities, and comfortably adjust the amount of intimacy and anonymity. Welcome!Kris
